OUR TEAM

Meet the smart, creative, and super-dedicated team behind the Live Wire Radio magic.

LUKE BURBANK
HOST

Luke Burbank (he/him/his) grew up as one of seven kids, learning early on how to vie for attention. Those profound childhood issues have propelled him to various media projects including This American Life, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, CBS Sunday Morning, and the daily podcast Too Beautiful To Live. Luke is thrilled to be hosting Live Wire and keeps telling himself you're chanting Luuuuuuuuuke and not saying Booooooooo because you're not doing that, right? Wait, seriously, you were booing? At a public radio show? This would never happen to Ira Glass. He's on Twitter @lukeburbank.

ELENA PASSARELLO
ANNOUNCER

Elena Passarello (she/her/hers) grew up in Snellville, a smallish town in Georgia with the motto "Where Everybody's Somebody." Even after moving several thousand miles from Snellville's city limits, she thinks this motto still applies. Elena is the author of two books, one about humankind's most amazing voices called Let Me Clear My Throat and one about famous critters called Animals Strike Curious Poses. Her dream in life is to one day jump out of a cake.

HEATHER DE MICHELE
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Heather de Michele (she/her/hers) has a background in theatre, film, live event production, and non-profit management. She joined Live Wire in June of 2020 after serving as the Managing Director of The Groundlings Theatre and School in Los Angeles for over a decade. Previous to that epic stint she was in NYC as the Artistic Director of American Girl Theatre. Heather is the momma of two hell-raising daughters, the wife of one badass creative, and is often found roller skating in the streets. She hopes you'll find as much unabashed joy and unexpected wisdom in Live Wire as she does. You can email Heather here.

LAURA HADDEN
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER

Laura Hadden (she/her)​ spent three years producing media for The Moth in New York City before returning to her beloved Pacific Northwest in 2014. Her ongoing creative projects include co-­producing Wage/Working (a jukebox­-based oral history project ), co-­hosting United Noshes (a one­-meal­-per­-country dinner party series), and keeping her two small children entertained. When she was a kid, she wanted to be a country singer and/or dog. She now spends her free time hanging out with her dogs, Emmylou & Reba, which is close enough. Email Laura here.

MELANIE SEVCENKO
PRODUCER AND EDITOR

Melanie Sevcenko (she/her/hers) moved to Portland by way of Berlin, Germany, where she lived for almost a decade and turned her film career into a journalistic one. She’s reported for The Guardian, Marketplace, NPR, BBC, CBC, among others. Melanie is also an Irish & Canadian citizen, a distant relative of Ukrainian writer Taras Shevchenko, and a published poet. She is quite proud of her chapbook’s title (We Slept in Body Bags, Just in Case) and her full-length collection I Still Go to Bed With Water was published in 2022. You can find Melanie’s work at msevcenko.com and email her here.

KAREN PAN

MARKETING AND PRODUCTION MANAGER

Karen Pan (she/her/hers) grew up in Portland, Oregon and comes from a background of visual storytelling. She has been involved in the Portland film and television industry for over half a decade as an actress and model, and trained under Coach Katie O’Grady at The Studio Northwest and Coach Markus Flanagan through his Meisner Series in Los Angeles. She has previously worked on Oregon-based productions such as Chad and Trinkets, and has been involved within the Oregon Media Production Association as a legislative advocate for arts and culture funding within Oregon. In her free time you can find her playing the piano, watching reality television, and obsessing over Taylor Swift. She can’t wait to see you around the community!

JACKIE IBARRA

PRODUCTION FELLOW

Jackie (she/hers) is an audio journalist from San Antonio, Texas. Her passion for the world of audio extends to every facet, from the meticulous reporting process to the artful editing and everything in between. She’s worked for places like Texas Monthly and The Texas Standard where she’s edited podcasts and produced feature stories. With experience in radio, podcasting, and production Ibarra aims to tell stories that reflect the world around us. She loves all things podcasts , even hosting and producing her own true-crime podcast called “Darkness: The Mark Kilroy Story.” When she’s not geeking out over audio, you can find her obsessing over her plants and Taylor Swift.

ROSA GARCIA
DEVELOPMENT AND OPERATIONS ASSOCIATE

Rosa Garcia (she/her/hers) has been working in the non-profit field for close to a decade. Originally from Mexico, she has lived in California, Oregon, and Washington but considers Oregon home. There is nothing as beautiful as a Portland summer, even when it's too hot to go out. She is raising a future vet/scientist/artist and an orange kitty named Lucas Parker Walnut. Hobbies include finding new coffee shops, scavenging for the best pastry in Portland and enjoying the hidden gem taco spots in the Metro Area. Every month you can find her sketching with Urban Sketchers PDX.

EBEN HOFFER
TECHNICAL DIRECTOR

Eben Joondeph Hoffer was grown in a damp corner of Portland, to which he returned in 2020 after a decade making performance art in NYC basements and inflicting it on college students around the eastern United States. Now he teaches, makes and mixes music, and manages projects and tours for artists who think about how things could be Different. You can listen to his podcast post office poems (a collaboration with an actual mail carrying human), or inflict his performance art on yourself at ebenhoffer.com.

LEONA KINDERMANN

TECHNICAL DIRECTOR

Leona's life is woven together through work as an interdisciplinary teacher, as a Music Director for children's theater, a live and recording sound tech and musician, and physical artist. Born and raised in this cloudy corner of the world (and in an equally cloudy corner of Germany), Leona has a lot of questions about life, but also an endless appreciation for the people that hold it all together, the youth she gets to work with, who will (and should) take over the world, for all the beautiful art and artists coming out of these hard times, for the planet, and every cat.

TRÉ HESTER
ASSISTANT EDITOR

Tré Hester (he/him/his) is an audio engineer, podcast editor, field recordist, and musician based in Baltimore, MD. He also spends a fair amount of time in Portland, OR where he plays with a musical project called Completions.

ETHAN FOX TUCKER
HOUSE BAND

Ethan Fox Tucker (he/him/his) is from Portland and grew up on '70s funk and '60s folk. He attended the Johnston Center for Integrative Studies and earned a degree in "Studio Art, Creative Writing, and Songwriting." He has worked as a session musician and loves to be in the studio crafting and recording. His current projects include Fox Tucker, Siren and the Sea, Saroon, and Mean Sun.

SAMUEL TUCKER
HOUSE BAND

Samuel Tucker (he/him/his) grew up Portland, OR, and spent much of his adolescence rocking out with his older brother Ethan in their parent’s basement. No Thin Lizzy song would be left un-strummed. Sam graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in Product Design and has been working on various design-build projects around Portland since returning home. Sam also loves playing park ball in the summer, Euchre (or any other tricksy card games), and a good sandwich.

EZRA VEENSTRA
GUEST WRANGLER

Ezra Veenstra (they/he) is a theatre artist and creative-about-town born and raised in Portland, Oregon. Their shortlist of favorite things includes making their loved ones listen to public radio on the weekends and being within a 100 yard radius of a stage as often as possible, so it makes a lot of sense they ended up here. Ezra has written some things, made some stuff, and looks forward to doing that more. 

A WALKER SPRING
HOUSE BAND

A Walker Spring (she/her/hers) - Cohost of Honest Jams songwriting podcast, recording engineer and veteran Portland songwriter and multi-instrumentalist (Bitch’n, Sallie Ford, Point Juncture, WA). 

BECKY PHILLIPS
INTERN

Becky (she/her) is a non fiction creative writing major at Portland State University. Before venturing into the world of writing, she studied photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY. As of recent, she has been learning the ropes of music journalism which has become a new found passion. In her free time, she plays bass and guitar in a musical collaboration, reads, drinks coffee, and does way too many crossword puzzles.

AYAL ALVES
HOUSE BAND

ayal was born in a settlement 10 families large to parents from the northern and southern halves of the other side of the world. He has picked up every musical instrument dropped in his path since. ayal believes in music as a beacon towards self-actualization and his love for sound has expressed itself through international tours with his genre-fluid project Saroon, as host of the music podcasts Sketches with Songs and Honest Jams, contributing to numerous Portland artists’ records and bands, and as a Music Therapist. 

THE BOARD

Live Wire Radio is a 501c3 non-profit organization. These incredible people donate their time to ensure the continued success and longevity of their favorite public radio show and we are so grateful.